ah, writing

[bedlamsbard]

*sigh* Hit a plot stall on Gambit 9 due to the fact I'd plotted Gambit out to chapter 7 -- I know roughly what's going to happen at the end, but I have to figure out how to get there in a logical manner without getting lost in the interpersonal relationship details that are going to have to come as part of the fallout from the last scene of 7. The other thing is that I conceived of Gambit in two parts, the way that Dust is a trio, so once I hit the end of part one in 8 I was looking at 9 as basically the first chapter of a completely different story. Which it both is and isn't, and I was trying to split the difference when writing it, which screwed it up. Step back! Look at the big picture! Figure out what is and isn't absolutely necessary to put on the page!

Meanwhile, although I had Gambit 8 finished when I put up 7, I started doing rewrites yesterday, and unfortunately these are the kind of ground-up rewrites where I need to rewrite almost everything from scratch, not the kind of edits where I tweak some words and add in a couple of new paragraphs.

Obviously, in typical Bedlam fashion, so far I've almost doubled the wordcount of the scene I'm rewriting. (Alt!Obi-Wan POV flashback to his meeting with the Jedi High Council; the reason it required ground-up rewrites was because the characterization was off. He might not be a Jedi anymore, he might be extremely well-armed -- can't resist a good disarming scene -- but he's not as angry and paranoid as he is later. Paranoid, sure, but differently paranoid because the reasons for his reaction at the end of 6 haven't happened yet. (Yes, we'll find out what they are.) At this point I need him way more mellow than he is in the next (present day) scene, which probably won't require quite the degree of rewrites as the current scene in progress. Plus there's an emotional gut-punch and some plot stuff that needs to be worked in.)

Ah, writing.

Obi-Wan nodded and passed Quinlan his lightsaber, then handed over his sidearm and began the complicated process of disarming himself of all his holdout weapons. He hadn’t even considered that the Jedi Council wouldn’t let him into the chamber armed, otherwise he would have limited himself to his blaster, lightsaber, and bracers instead of the usual gear he carried for a day in. Instead he unsheathed his boot-knives – those he passed to Luminara instead of Quinlan, since he had cut more than a few throats in the past few years and there was no need for Quin to see that – then added his holdout blasters, the vibroblades sheathed at the small of his back and up his sleeves, and the electromagnetic pulse chips and stun grenades he carried in his belt pouches.

“What happened to ‘blasters are crude, uncivilized weapons’?” Quinlan asked as Obi-Wan stripped off his bracers, which aside from having an inset comlink, also packed a small electrical charge in the left, an EMP in the right, and a few other tricks. “Or ‘a Jedi doesn’t need any weapon but his lightsaber’, for that matter?”

“Sometimes the occasion calls for crude and uncivilized,” Obi-Wan said, adding the secure comlink that connected directly to Padmé and an experimental droid deactivator that he found in his pocket. “And I’m not a Jedi anymore.”

Which was the whole point of this particular show.

“Forgetting anything?” Quinlan asked as Obi-Wan paused to pat himself down and hold up the datachip he’d brought for the Temple Guards to inspect. “Thermal detonator? Rocket launcher? Tank?”

“Left them in my other shirt,” Obi-Wan said. He turned to the Temple Guards, raising an eyebrow. “May I?”